


Casablanca

by BeeDaily



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Muggle, F/M, Fluff and Humor, Uber
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-11
Updated: 2019-09-11
Packaged: 2020-11-02 02:48:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,532
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20596364
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BeeDaily/pseuds/BeeDaily
Summary: When James takes over Remus's Uber shift, the last person he expects to take on as a passenger is a familiar redhead who is a trifle inebriated.





	Casablanca

**Author's Note:**

  * For [GhostofBambi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/GhostofBambi/gifts).

> For my dearest, most darling Sarah, who lets me take her crap car hire experiences and turn it into a fluffy humor fic, and who tolerates that I gift her with fic presents a week after I tell her I will, and who I will get to see in twelve days anyway. <3

When James drives up to the drab, squarish brick house with the _ literal _ white picket fence located in the middle of Boringshire, London Suburbia, the last person he expects to see galloping straight towards his vehicle is a familiar redhead, skittering like a newborn fawn on unsteady spindle legs, one shoe off and a giant purse thrown over her shoulder like the proverbial burlap dollar sack of thieves of yore.

"Go, go, _ goooo_—" she's shouting, adding to this image, bypassing the Uber user's typical preference for the backseat and instead yanking open the passenger side door, then promptly _ hurtling _herself into the seat beside him.

James is whacked in the shoulder with one errant hand, and the single undonned shoe somehow finds its way to the floor beneath him. She's wearing a flowy, flowered sundress and the silky fabric has ridden up and revealed a healthy swath of smooth, pale skin. James forces his eyes to the windshield as she slams the car door closed behind her.

It's _ her. _

Somehow, here, incredibly, it's _ her_. 

"Hello," he says, formal and flushing. "You're…er, Lily. Lily. Yes? I'm—"

"Go, go, go-_oooo_!"

"But—"

"—oooo—!"

"You—"

"_Go! _"

James goes.

There is more to say—_so _much more to say, on twelve different levels, but the important level—the one in which she is shouting at him—takes precedent at the moment. He keeps his foot to the gas, not quite with tires squealing dramatically, but close enough. He makes it to the end of the road, stopping briefly as he flicks on his turn signal, then tries again.

"Er…ma'am—"

"_Ma'am_," she squawks like an intoxicated parrot, snorting and scoffing and still all limbs and long legs askew. She's squirming around in the seat, trying to maneuver her apparently uncooperative body parts and the giant bag while simultaneously doing her best to buckle her seatbelt. She positively _ reeks _of sickly sweet alcohol.

"Where is my shoe?" she asks.

James looks down. "Er...by my feet."

"Well, how'd it get _ there_?"

"You threw it there?"

"You _ best _not have some foot fetish," she mutters in warning, and James is grateful they are still on residential streets so that when she abruptly leans straight into his lap to grapple for her shoe, squirrels are the only potential victims of his sudden break slam. His eyes fly downward, certain she will shout or cry or threaten legal action over his reckless driving, but she's far more concerned with straightening up, then promptly tossing her reclaimed shoe over her shoulder into the backseat (…?).

She begins to work at re-buckling her seatbelt, as her shoe-diving has got it all locked up and now she needs to start again with it.

She is _ cross _ with the seatbelt, and is muttering at it with vicious, creative swear words.

James takes a deep breath. Gently presses the gas once more.

"Ma'am—"

"I get carsick," she tells him without prompting, without preamble. She's finally got herself buckled and is fairly preening in smugness over her success. "I know it's the done thing to sit in back, but I _ can't _ sit in back unless you want me spreading my DNA in vomit form all over your nice seats that you need un-vomity for commerce, and also for life, so I'm doing you a _ favour_, you're welcome."

"Thank you," James replies politely, after the fact, because what else can he do? "But, see—"

"Have I got my wallet?"

"I…don't know?"

"Fuuuuuu-_ck_," she drawls, extending it long and lingering, then hitting the constants hard. She is burrowing through the giant purse like a magpie now, head buried deep, like Mary Poppins. "Fuck. _ Fuck. _ What a _ fucking _ disaster that would be." Then, enraged: "Bloody _ stole _ my wallet!"

She's glaring _ at _ him. James is alarmed. "Me?"

"What?" She pulls a face. "No, of course not _ you_. I don't _ know _you."

She does, actually—well, sort of. They've definitely exchanged commiserating looks in the lobby café queue before. Multiple times, even. With extra lip quirks and raised eyebrows, and once she even went, "Really?" when Miserable Marta took four full minutes to count out three quid change and James had muttered, "Imagine if he'd given her a twenty," and she'd gone "Oh, the _ horror_," and James had spent the whole day (maybe week) reliving the conversation (brief exchange?) in his head.

Maybe she's too drunk to realise, or maybe James is not as memorable as he thinks he is.

Which is more depressing?

But now he knows her name is _ Lily_, because the app has told him so, and he hadn't known that before—_likes _ it, Lily. Likes the way his tongue hits his teeth when he says it. _ Lily. Li-ly_—and he's not certain whether that's creepy or kismet, and he's equally as uncertain whether she's cognizant enough to clarify it for him one way or the other.

She's again headless, in her bag.

"John is a right bloody _ twat_," comes her muffled voice, indignant. "I can't _ believe _ he's done this—actually, I can, because ever since childhood he's been a _ fuckwad _ and—I never told _ anyone _ about that thing that I never told anyone about, y'know? Ought to be _ grateful_, John, not bloody _ filching my wallet_, the sodding _ wanker _ with his stupid _ pomegranate—_oh, wait. Here it is."

The head pops out, and she's got a bright pink wallet in her hand…which she also promptly chucks into his backseat.

He genuinely doesn't know why she keeps doing that.

She's curled her hair, James notes, shooting looks at her as he waits silently at the roundabout. She's usually got it pulled back in some fancy twist, or occasionally down around her shoulders, but it's always been straight and silky and James likes it like that, but he's _ also _ keen on this look—the curls. Light and bouncy, and one is tucked up behind her ear with just the right size corkscrew that makes James's fingers ache to reach out and twirl it.

Uber likely frowns upon their employees fondling customers' hair.

The police too, come to think of it.

"I am drunk," Lily announces, sighing back in her seat.

James hums a vague agreement.

"A _ trifle _ dis-_gusted_," she elaborates, and laughs at herself. Then: "John fingered Rebecca Robson in his parents' bedroom when we were thirteen and his younger sister walked in and that's the thing I never told but now I'm telling."

"Okay," James says.

"Because he _ stole my wallet_."

"But he didn't?"

"What?"

"You found it. Just a second ago. In your bag? Tossed it in my backseat?"

"What?" she repeats, but it's more astonishment now. And then some horror. She shoots a look over her shoulder, then twirls back around and claps a hand over her mouth. "Oh _ no_." Then, squeezing her eyes shut, laughing: "_Don't _ tell him I told you."

Considering there are approximately nine trillion Johns in the greater London area alone, James reckons the likelihood of _ finding _ the correct bloke is already slim to none, much less finding a way to casually work into conversation the fact that he's aware John was once caught out by his younger sibling while fingering some gal with youthful abandon, and a gorgeous drunk redhead called Lily told him so.

"'Course not," he says instead. Because that's what good Uber drivers do. Probably. 

"It's just _ Petunia_, y'know?" The frown that pulls and slumps her pretty features is surprisingly poignant, and James keeps a concerned gaze on her for as long as traffic allows. "How'd she go and find someone to marry who is even _ more _ miserable than she is, y'know? And then she's all '_Make a toast _ ' and I'm all '_What? Toast? With marmalade ha ha' _ and she says quit it and _ yes _ because Vernon's sister hasn't made the appropriate weight yet to be featured in any wedding photos—and this was an _ engagement party_, not even a wedding—and that's so _ vile_—but someone's got to make a _ toast _ and it's got to be _ family_, apparently, so the options were poor weight-shamed Marge, or me, who Vernon and Petunia _ hate_, even though I am generally a _ very lovable person_, see?"

James murmurs something to the effect that he _ does _ see, but his affirmation is not needed. She carries on without it.

"So then I've got to _ speak_, and I don't even _ know _ most of these people—they're _Vernon's _ relatives, and _ Petunia's _ mates, and I _ do _ it, y'know? Because Mum would've wanted me to? I do it. I say the _ stupid _ bloody toast, and it's a _ nice _ toast, even though Petunia and Vernon _ don't deserve it _ because they are _ horrible _ people who treat me like dirt and that makes me cross so I begin to drink and then I _ keep _ drinking and then somehow I've spilled a drink on Vernon's head and _ I don't know how that happened_."

"Ah," James says. Because perhaps this _ does _ need a response. He doesn't know.

"Except…well, I sort of _ do_," she confesses, in a sigh, in a whisper. "Because I'd already ordered the Uber, see? And I wait the seven minutes until you turn up, and _ ping _ you've arrived, and I'm saying my goodbyes, and I grab my bag, and then Vernon is _ there_, and he's just said something so…so…_Vernon_, and so I think it almost counts as premeditated if I have a getaway car waiting in the drive, right? I mean, legally?"

"Legally."

She exhales heavily. "I'm a barrister. Legality matters."

"Of course," James intones, but thinks _ barrister_. She's a _ barrister_. There are law firms on the third and seventh floor of their office building—or maybe it's the second floor? Either way, _ that's _ where she goes after she leaves the café queue. The third or seventh or second floor.

James is on the fifth floor.

He's spreading out building blueprints in his head like a treasure map, X marks the spot.

"Oi," she says, then jolts up straight. "_Oi_."

The second _ oi _ comes with a surprisingly firm slap of her hand against his arm. James jumps as he's turning onto the motorway, checking the road, then the app—no, there isn't some dangerous oncoming traffic he's missed, and he _ is _ going the right way, Waze assures him—and his eyes rivet to hers.

Has he mentioned how pretty her eyes are? Green and bright and heavily fringed, even when she's scowling at him, like she is now?

"What?" he asks.

"_You_," she says, like a guess during Cluedo. Like an accusation. "You're…very, very hot."

James can't help it—he laughs. _ Chortles_, even.

"Thank you," he says, merging, preening.

"What? Oh—_no_." She snorts, then starts laughing as well. "Not _ that_—I mean, yes, sure, of course, that too, but—I mean, you're Very, Very Hot. As in…" She waves a hand. "'Hi, large cappuccino, very, very hot, thanks. Very, _ Very _ Hot, Marta.'"

She's lowered her voice in some semblance of a drawl that James reckons is supposed to resemble him, but he's too beyond tickled at having his usual coffee order mimicked back at him so pristinely to take offense at the inaccurate capture of his natural timbre.

"Only on Monday through Thursday," he corrects, grinning. "Friday I treat myself to frappe."

"Marta can't make frappe. It goes to liquid immediately." But she's frowning at him again, a deep and settled scowl of perturb, brow low and furrowing. "But…you're called James."

"And you're Lily." He's _thrilled _to now know this.

"No, I mean—I mean, _ yes_, I'm Lily, but you're called _ James _ because I checked the _ directory _ and you're—" She lets out a noise of displeasure, then _ plunk_—drops her head back into the giant bag again. James switches lanes as she digs. When the curls spring back out, she's got her phone. She sticks it right in his face, which is a traffic hazard. "You're called James and you're _ not _ called Remus, see? R-E-M-U-S."

Oh, fuck. Right. That.

"Oh—yeah." James pulls a face, apologetic. "I tried to tell you earlier—"

"Are you a kidnapper?" Her eyes go wide. "A _ murderer_?"

"No," James replies emphatically. "Neither. I promise. I—"

"Because I actually have _really_ crap luck with car hire, so that would fit in, y'know, linearly, with my general car hire experience." She says this definitively, though James notes for someone accusing him of sinister intentions, she doesn't even lean away. In fact, she leans closer to him. "Once, my driver didn't believe me when I said we'd arrived at my flat. He kept driving round and round, claiming the _app _was right. Not, y'know, the _human_ who _lives _there. _Practically_ kidnapping! And another time—I'd just arrived in Barcelona, and couldn't have traveled _ten minutes_ in the cab, and he tells me it'll be a hundred euro. A _hun-_dred euro—can you even _ believe_? Was I served caviar and lobster en route and couldn't recall? I am _ allergic _ to lobster, so I don't think so, sir, I just don't _ think so_—and then—AND THEN—" She shouts this one, and grabs his arm, her fingers curling tightly around the sleeve of his flannel. "AND THEN—I am late to work one morning and I hop in a cab and would you believe—_would you believe—_the chap is up there in the front seat—up there in the front _ seat_—and I think—I mean, I was in the back then, valiantly fighting the carsickness, so I think—_I think_—he's sitting up there and he's…_he's _…"

As James's eyes dart between the road and the incensed woman beside him, she gives him another _ very _pointed look, curls the hand that's not clutching his arm into a fist, and then gives a terribly obscene up-down motion.

"_No_," James says, outraged.

"_Yes_," Lily cries, nodding. "Like we were in a _ porno. _ I said, 'LET ME OUT' and got his cab number and reported him and _ that_," she says, with one more suspicious look, "is my car hire _ history_, James-Not-Remus, so if you mean to kidnap and/or murder me, please be assured I _ will not stand for it_. I will _ fight_, and _ scream_, and _ beat you with my shoe, _ getting _ endless _ DNA evidence, because I listen to _ loads _ of true crime podcasts, and I know _ all _ the tricks that get people caught—"

"Lily—"

"—in fact, I should start recording this _ right now… _ say hullo, James-Not-Remus, who is trying to _ kidnap me _ while playing _ Queen _ on the radio, so that I'm _ sucked into his scheme _ with a rousing _ soundtrack_—"

"That's not—"

"Google Maps is _ everywhere _ and they will _ catch you_."

With mild amusement and a healthy dose of perturb (though this is his own fault. He's got no one else to blame), James swipes the Uber app down—Lily screeches in outrage, filming it all—and clicks through to FaceTime, where he hits the first contact in his call history and thankfully gets through in a matter of moments.

"Hullo?" Remus says, from his hospital bed.

"Lily, meet Remus," James says quickly, and the redhead's outraged screeching cuts off abruptly. "My mate, who usually drives this Uber. Who is in hospital for a time, but still needs the pay as he's missing work. He's a teacher. Of children. Very saintly. And sickly. So a few of us are covering for him, to gain ourselves good karma for our next life. Very selfish of us. Say hullo, Remus."

"Hullo," Remus says obligingly, but he's got an exasperated look on his ashen face. "James, I thought you were going to explain this to them _ before _ they got in the car, so they could decide if they wanted another driver—"

"I _ was_," James insists. "Only—"

"Only he was my getaway car," Lily finishes, and takes James's phone off the holder attached to his windshield, bringing it very close to her face. "There was no time for explanations. My fault, really, if he _ were _a murderer." She's got her phone in her other hand, and has stopped recording her own potential kidnapping in order to compare the Remus on FaceTime to the Remus in the little picture on her Uber app. She nods eventually, apparently satisfied. "You look like Remus."

"I am. And he's not a murderer," Remus assures, thanks ol' chap. "Probably."

No thanks, ol' chap.

"There's some correlating statistic about serial killers and good-looking men—so who could blame me for assuming? Have you seen this face?" Lily thrusts the phone at James, as if to give Remus a good gander. James is both complimented and insulted. Then she brings the phone back to her. "_V-ery _ suspicious. Very, _ very _ suspicious. How are you feeling, Remus?"

"Shitty, thanks," Remus says, but cheerfully. Then, after a pause: "You look familiar."

A sudden jolt of panic sweeps through James, hot and cold and _shit shit_ shit, because Remus may or may not have been the recipient of a few surreptitiously taken blurry photos over the past two months, with messages like **this is my future wife **and **remus i talked to her today she said OH THE HORROR HA HA IT WAS SO FUNNY i love her.**

What are the chances Remus's auto-immune disease gives him a mild touch of selective amnesia?

Rotten, James decides, so he snatches his phone from a bewildered Lily—"We were _ talking_!"—and blithely calls, "Sorry, mate, need directions. Feel better, don't bite the staff—bye!" and hangs up.

Remus will forgive him, James is certain. Or he won't, and James will have to grovel, but groveling to Remus is better than admitting to the woman beside him that he's fancied her from afar (and not so afar) for ages, and now she's stuck in a car with him and his unrequited affections for thirty more minutes.

_ Christ_, he sounds creepy.

_ Is _ he creepy?

Probably.

Shit.

As he fits his phone back into the windshield holder, cursing circumstance, Lily sulks.

"That was _ rude_," she declares, and crosses her arms over her chest. "I wanted to have a chat. _ Now _ how am I meant to gather intel on you?"

"Ask me?" James offers.

"_Pft_."

"Sorry." He clicks back to the app. "Have to get you where you're going, don't I?"

_ Have to keep you from hearing how often I talk about you, _ is not added, but equally truthful.

"_Pft_," she says again, appearing to like this sound. If she means to elaborate further, the words are lost when she gets distracted by a blotch of something dark on the felty ceiling of Remus's Volkswagen. She reaches up to swipe at it with her fingers, scowling when repeated brushes don't magically whisk it away.

"It's soy sauce," James tells her. "Sirius—another mate—is a right slob. He's been banned from car eating since, but reckon that's been there since uni."

"_Inter_-esting." But she continues to pet the felt for several long moments. Then her hand drops. "My flat."

"What?"

"You have to get me where I'm going, and I'm going to my flat."

"Ah."

"The big glass building. With mold on the fourth floor."

"Right."

"Put that in."

"In?"

"To the _ app_."

"Ah. Will do."

"You haven't done."

James turns the phone, mimes at pressing buttons. "There."

God, it's far too easy. She sinks down in her seat, immediately content. "Thank you very very much, Very Very Hot. You are Very, Very Hot. And not called Remus."

"No, not called Remus."

"You are James."

"I am James."

"And Very, Very Hot."

"Only Mondays through Thursdays."

"_Pft_," she says again, then cackles.

Because she is drunk.

Very, _ very _drunk.

And also his passenger. And this is for _ Remus_, who needs rent and food and won't take James's money unless it's earned and that leaves precious few options. This Uber is one of those options. James can't go back on that, simply because he's fancied himself a bit in love with the woman next to him after two months of standing in a queue behind her and precisely four legitimately exchanged words.

Well—there was also that time she and her mate were discussing _ Stranger Things _ and all her opinions were correct, but those words weren't _ to _ James. He was just eavesdropping. Like a creeper.

That seems to be a troublesomely recurring theme here.

He's on the verge of apologising, or maybe just trying to explain, when he hears a familiar chime ringing beside him.

James turns.

"What are you doing?" he asks.

"_Shhh_," she scolds, flapping one hand at him as the other holds up her phone, the familiar black FaceTime screen filling the interface. "I am _ on_—hel-_lo_, my darling!"

"Hello, my darling," echoes a female voice from the screen. Lily keeps swinging the phone around to view herself from different angles, so James can't see who it is. "What are you—are you in a car?"

"Y-_es_," Lily replies, and pauses in her maneuvering long enough to pucker her lips into a hasty kiss, then starts waving the phone around again. "I dumped an aperol spritz on Vernon's head."

"Oh, _ Lily."_

"Mary—_shhh_—Mary, you will _ never guess_—" She's cackling again, her grin wide and delighted and mischievous. "Ne-_ver_—"

"Are you drunk?"

"Yes," Lily quickly replies. "But Mary—_Mary_—you will _ never_—of _ all _the gin joints—"

"Whose car are you in?" Mary, James decides, is a good mate. Unerringly practical, and properly patient and concerned when dealing with a sloshed friend. "Did you ring King to pick you up? Or—who's that neighbour of yours? The one who's sister caught him fingering that girl that time?"

James holds back a snort.

Never told _ anyone_, did she?

Lily gasps. "John _ Thompson_. Bastard _ filched _ my wallet!"

"What?" Mary cries, at the same time James feels he _ must _ interject with, "No, he didn't!"

Really, poor John Thompson is having his reputation needlessly sullied here.

Mary's good mate sensors are instantly set a-tingle.

"Lily," she says slowly. "That didn't sound like Kingsley."

"It's _ not_," Lily singsongs, her voice positively gleeful. "He is my _ Uber _ driver. _ Mary_. You will not guess—you will _ not believe_—"

"Lily!" Mary sounds irate. "Are you mad? You have _ terrible _luck with car hire!"

"I know, but—"

"You're probably getting yourself _ abducted_."

"I haven't! I _ checked_," Lily says, smug. "With Remus."

"Who is Remus?"

"The real Uber driver. The one from the app."

"The one from the—_Lily_—"

"He's in _ hospital_," Lily says coldly, scandalised. "Honestly, Mary. Have some _ sympathy._"

"Let me talk to your driver. _ Now_." Mary is not having any of this. "I swear, if I have to identify your body—"

"It's fine!" James jumps in, certain this has gone on long enough. He strives to sound his most innocent and un-abductor-like, leaning over, though Lily still hasn't turned the phone towards him. "I swear, she's fine! A bit trashed, is all. I'm James. Not an abductor. Actually, we sort of know each other—"

"That's what I was _telling_ _you_," Lily huffs, exasperated. "Mary—_look_." Now the phone screen is finally whipped around. Lily is cackling again, then she whispers, "Very, Very Hot is my Uber driver!"

"What?" Mary demands, at the same time James takes his eyes off the moving traffic long enough to shoot the screen a friendly smile and give an amicable, "Hi."

He has only enough time to register Mary's high-lifted brow—_and _ the fact that he actually knows her too. She was the one Lily was discussing _ Stranger Things _ with—before Lily yanks the phone back around, awash with more laughter.

"Mary." She waggles her eyebrows. "It's Very, Very Hot!"

"So it is."

"Can you _ believe_?"

"That the bloke you stalk at work is your Uber driver? No. Only you, Lily."

The bloke she _ what_?

"I know!" Lily cries with delight, and James reckons she swings the phone back around to him just in time for her mate to catch a good look at his utterly gobsmacked, wide open trap. "Of _ all _the gin joints!"

"In all the towns in all the world," Mary finishes, and now she's gone from murderously dubious to highly amused. Her tone is friendly and rueful. "Hey there, Very, Very Hot."

"Hullo," James somehow finds the ability to reply, though his heart is going _ thump, thump, thump, _and his insides seem to have taken up a kind of raucous, exuberant dancing. There's a kick line and jazz hands and fluttering, multi-coloured confetti. "You can call me James."

"I think I prefer Very, Very Hot, thanks." He keeps his eyes on the road, but he can practically _ hear _ Mary's smirk. "Mind getting my mate home safely, please?"

"No problem."

"And if it's no trouble—mind getting her number too? That way you can ask her out properly and she can quit wasting untold amounts of money buying crap beverage from the lobby café just to have an excuse to run into you, especially when we have a perfectly functioning and free kettle in our office canteen?"

"Marta _ is _ crap," Lily agrees, and James feels his chest continue to heat, to expand, as she slaps his arm and goes, "Remember that time she took _ nine hundred years _ to count out change and you said 'what if it had been a twenty' and I laughed for _ a millennium_?"

James is rather certain she hadn't even laughed in the _ moment_, but the way she's cracking up about it now makes him feel like a champion.

Christ, imagine if it'd actually been a _ good _joke.

"Job done here, then, looks like." Mary speaks with the brisk efficiency of success, not quite dusting her hands in an all-set gesture, but very near to it. "See you home, Lil. Very, Very Hot, have you got the right address?"

"I _ told _ him," Lily says, rolling her eyes. "Glass building. Mold on the fourth floor."

"29 Berkeley?" James supplies, reading off the app.

_ "See?" _ Lily says.

"Well done, Lil." There's a smacking of lips as Mary blows her a kiss. "Hands to yourself, you hear?"

James bristles in offense. "I'm not an abductor _ or _a molester of drunk women, thanks."

"Not you, sunshine." There's more laughter in her voice. "Lily? He's got to drive and can't have you feeling him up, understood?"

"_Pft_."

"Try your best. Ta, my darlings!"

"Ta!" Lily calls, and blows a kiss too, but James is rather certain Mary has already ended the call. With that completed, Lily drops the phone into her lap and sighs happily. "Of _ all _the gin joints," she says again.

"Of all the gin joints," James repeats, grinning like a loon.

He feels high and electrocuted. Jovial and manic. He clenches the steering wheel with tight-knuckled fists and thinks _ of all the Ubers in all the towns in all the world, she getawayed into mine_, and looks to Lily in glee, certain she'll marvel at this with him, but she's presently occupied with curling her legs up onto the seat, tucking her head neatly against the passenger side window, and closing her eyes.

"Wake me up when we're home," she murmurs, cuddling against the door. "If I drool, don't look."

"I won't," James promises, but reckons he might even find her drool adorable, which is pretty pathetic when one stops to think about it.

Or pretty brilliant. One or the other.

The car goes quiet as James's mind continues to whirl, the only noise the background music of Pandora's Queen Radio still playing, and the occasional vibration as a new directive pops up on the app. Part of him surely wishes that she might have decided this precise moment _ wasn't _a brilliant time for a nap, but what's a bloke to do? So what if he really would've rather talked to her—inquired perhaps about this common hobby of stalking they've got, and their crap senses of humour, and maybe what her last name is, and also a bit about her hopes and dreams.

But the only dreams Lily seems presently interested in are the ones REM cycles provide, and so James is left to his own devices, navigating the light traffic of a Saturday afternoon, making his way towards the big glass building with mold on the fourth floor. If he momentarily considers circling her flat like a lost tourist, he quickly decides against it, recalling that abduction has been frowned upon multiple times today.

There are no empty spots in front of 29 Berkeley Road—which _ is _in fact a large glass building, though if the mold on the fourth floor also proves true, James can't tell it from the outside. He double-parks next to a quaint black Mini Cooper, ignoring the app alert that's already trying to send him off to pick up his next customer. Instead, he puts on the car break and turns toward his dozing passenger.

"Lily," he whispers, dropping a hand on her shoulder and nudging softly. "Lily? You're home."

"Hm?" she murmurs, eyes still closed, no drool in sight. She swats at this hand. "G'way."

" 'Fraid not, love. Reckon you'd rather be sleeping in your bed anyway, yeah?"

She grumbles something dismissive at this logic, stirring and protesting, her face scrunched up in a moue of displeasure. As James gives her another nudge, she lets out an overly hefty groan, but finally seems to gain back some awareness that the close to her nap draws nigh. Soon, her green eyes blink open. The hazy orbs focus in on him. "Hi," she greets hoarsely.

James smiles. "Hi."

"What're you doing here?"

"Dropping you off, remember?" When she only stares at him blankly, James continues. "Called an Uber? Getaway car? Of all the gin joints?"

"Oh. Right." She rubs at her eyes, begins to sit up. "Where's my shoe?"

"In the backseat. With your wallet."

"What're they doing _ there_?" she mutters, then briskly unclips her seatbelt before unceremoniously _ catapulting _ over the middle console and into the backseat. James dodges her flailing legs as she settles in back and then begins chucking her belongings to the front. Her wallet nearly nails him smack in the forehead.

"Watch out," she warns helpfully, a full five seconds after the wallet has already landed.

James would've laughed, but he's too busy dodging her limbs again as she clambers back over the middle console into the passenger seat.

He shouldn't find this all so bloody endearing. Really, he shouldn't. 

"Here," he says, offering up the wallet that had landed in his lap. She's reaching down to slip back on her wayward shoe, both feet properly covered for the first time all trip. Her giant purse has got smooshed up against the door, and she grabs for that next.

"Thank you," she says graciously, taking the wallet from him. It's promptly tossed at the bag—misses the open flap, and needs to be reclaimed from the floor and chucked a second time. This attempt, it makes it in.

James wonders if this is the bit where he ought to ask for her number. Wonders if it's even fair of him to take advantage of what he's learned this trip—even though it's _ Mary _ who really spilled the beans, and Lily hadn't seemed the least bit distressed about it. But she is drunk. Her inhibitions are down. She keeps misplacing her belongings and repeating the same phrases and what if her alleged stalking of him is just a product of an afternoon's laugh, a drunken miscommunication, an accidental—

James feels a tug on his shirt collar, and then the sudden cool press of her lips on his.

"That is your tip," Lily declares, letting go of his shirt, but only so she can reach up and give his cheek a friendly pat. She seems to get briefly distracted by the bristle of his five o'clock shadow, rubbing up and down his jaw for a moment. He's fairly _ keening _at the touch when she drops her hands back into her lap.

"Guh," James says, or a noise that sounds very much like it.

"You may buy my tea on Monday. And ask me out," she allows regally, like a gift, like a queen. "But then we've got to stop going to that bloody café because it is highway robbery and Marta is awful and you don't even know what a good _ frappe _ is, James, and that's just not _ acceptable_."

"I like when they go to liquid," he says, though his mind is so aflutter—she _ kissed _him! K-i-s-s-e-d him!—it's really just argument for argument's sake. "I'm meant to get your number," he reminds her.

"You will," she answers vaguely, and James is no more prepared for the final peck she lands on his lips than he was for the first. This one lingers a bit longer, gives James a proper taste, even a chance to respond, but when he's still blinking out of the delicious haze, she opens the car door. "See you Monday. Thanks for the ride."

"You're welcome," James says, and then he watches as she hefts up her big purse, leans down to shoot him one last _ gorgeous _smile, then closes the car door behind her.

She stumbles straight into the Mini Cooper on her way out, cackles, rights herself, then keeps going.

_ Of all the gin joints, _James thinks.


End file.
